“For 20 years, the Fondation d'entreprise Ricard Prize has been supporting
and helping build the French art scene in its structures, hierarchies, methods
and forms. Year after year, it legitimizes the practices of artists, curators
and institutions, while establishing melodic contrasts when it invites artists
to do curation and curators to do art.

Although, more broadly, the torch-passing and role-usurping games
between authors, actors, commentators, settings, dedicated and non-dedicated sites,
inside and outside, with and without, together, alone and constrained, new and
used, free and unfree could constitute a subject, today it seems that these systematic
decompartmentalizations have become models of exhibition conception.

So although everything has been said and refuted, validation authorities
remain legitimate while no longer representing a concern for artists. Artistic
practices are emerging that are no longer about calibration at any cost, nor about
opposition formats. The commitment is complete, and is more casual than
vindictive. The purposeful lack of definition in these productions is not intended
as a statement. It refocuses works on what this introduction avoids evoking in
a drawn-out paradox: art and its experimentation.

The exhibition The Twentieth
Fondation d'entreprise Ricard Prize attempts to respect the modalities of
its existence while showing this movement, whose main actors are not concerned.

Meriem Bennani was born in 1988 in Rabat (Morocco), and lives and works in New York (USA). She studied at the Cooper Union in New York and at ENSAD in Paris.

She is represented by SIGNAL in New York.

Meriem Bennani uses video to re-teach simple, rarely tackled subjects like love, fashion and pop star fantasies. From the documentary register to reality-TV scenarios, she leads her pieces towards a toned-down neo-mannerism of video effects and installations in relief. This affectionate overstatement gives everyday life the power of the most grandiloquent operas, even if we have never gone to the opera.

Ludovic Boulard Le Fur was born in 1981 in Paris, and he lives and works in Mouleydier. He studied at ENSBA in Paris and at the School of Art & Design in Canberra (Australia).

Ludovic Boulard Le Fur is the creator of continuous work, which has led him from series to series, from illustration to engraving, to carved wood, to sculpture, and more recently to oil painting. In compositions that are a matter of shapelessness, the image is constructed by distinguishing eyes, faces and creatures. The work continues daily in modest, standard formats. The search for a form of representation tends to become the subject of his images. A panoramic unfolding of his work gently tells us about its evolution.

Anne Le Troter was born in 1985 in Saint- Étienne, and she lives and works in Paris. She studied at HEAD in Geneva (Switzerland) and at ESAD in Saint-Étienne.

Anne Le Troter’s main subject is speech and its formal formats. In language—through sound poetry, installations, theatre and writing—she intensifies the contrary movements of collective standards and individual expression. Her pieces combine corporative, domestic and emotional situations, stretching them to the point of abstraction, in an exhibition space, in a book, on SoundCloud, or (why not?) in people.

Lucile Littot was born in 1985 in Paris, where she lives and works. She studied at the École d'arts in Rueil-Malmaison and at the École des beaux-arts in Marseille. She is represented by the New Galerie in Paris.

Lucile Littot, in her porcelains, paintings, videos and performances, attempts to give life to archetypes that are not just autobiographical motifs, but also clichés of the history of film. They are developed in a system of equivalence spread between reality and fiction, between periods and between art registers. In her work, this results in scenarios of a nonchalant, macabre decadence under the influence of rococo. Her positioning without any distancing had a bewildering effect on us.

Guillaume Maraud was born in 1988 in Bordeaux, he now lives and works in Paris. He studied law at Université de Bordeaux, then studied at ENSAPC in Cergy. He is represented by Bel Ami in Los Angeles (USA) and Édouard Montassut in Paris.

Guillaume Maraud develops his work in a spirit of winter romanticism in which cultural mediums provide the codes of a new generation of vanities. By creating various series of inert objects and images, he replays a mass dysfunctional empathy. Post-conceptual gestures place his work in an irresolute state between the construction of form, the desire to produce, and their impossibility. From the financing of the object for which we are being solicited, to its production and reappearance in different states, everything acts.

Has been, hélas

Camille Besson was born 1990 in Nîmes. He studied at HEAD in Geneva.

Raphaël Rossi was born in 1988 in Dijon. He studied at ESAD in Reims.

Maxime Testu was born in 1990 in Rouen. He studied at ENSBA in Lyon and at HEAD in Geneva.

Victor Vaysse was born in 1989 in Paris. He studied at ENSBA in Paris and at the Fresnoy in Tourcoing.

They live and work in Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis.

Has been, hélas is an exhibition by four artists who work in Le Marquis studio in Saint-Denis and regularly exhibit their work together. This shared workspace involves a circulation of ideas, constraints and tools; it conditions a group dynamic while also surprisingly encouraging the autonomy of the sculptural practices of Camille Besson, Raphaël Rossi, Maxime Testu and Victor Vaysse. Their energy eludes our usual tools for defining the group and the individual.

Liv Schulman was born in 1985. She grew up in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and lives and works in Paris. She studied at ENSAPC in Cergy, at Goldsmiths University of London (United Kingdom), at UTDT in Buenos Aires and at ENSBA in Lyon.

Liv Schulman observes how contemporary societies alienate individuals and social groups. The words at the heart of her pieces explore the place of subjectivity within the political sphere, and the difficulty of giving it credit. Thus she presents a real soap opera on TV and also in a museum. She gets us to subscribe to her theories while simultaneously scuppering them. In the incredulous belief of her work, creating involves directly experiencing an environment, system or subject.

South Way Studio

Emmanuelle Luciani and Charlotte Cosson live and work in Marseille.

South Way Studio is a comprehensive project generating works of art, exhibitions, texts published in the magazine CODE South Way, and a production residency in Marseille. It was initiated by Emmanuelle Luciani and Charlotte Cosson, who are art historians and curators. Here, theoretical and artistic work are mutually influential. Researchers curate, curators give technical help to artists, artists theorize and produce. This results in exhibitions that take the form of historical explorations, in which each of the participants contributes to an object that eludes all reduction.

Victor Yudaev was born in 1984 in Moscow (USSR).

As a sculptor who does theater design with his own sculptures, he presents works while also presenting designs of characters, of their costumes, even of their silhouettes. He introduces micro-narratives that involve them, and meta-anecdotes on their development. In the form of volumes, photographs or writings, he collects scraps of what exists and recombines them in the semi-opaque bubble of his own lexicon. In his anachronistic world, each element makes us believe in its own life.

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